[plschwartz]

If anybody is interested in the progress of election in Ukraine where sans the US Marines deomocracy is surging see http://www.cvk.gov.ua/wp0011e

[bassetman]

Interesting, thanks!

[jackal969k]

It looks like Yushchenko is going to win but I wouldn't rule out an assasination attempt on him if he does.

[xico]

I didn't realize that Shamir was a Stalinist, but I think that becomes evident with the article. Despite that, I still think he casts an interesting view on what's happening on the Ukraine.

Ukraine on the brink

By Israel Shamir



Half a year ago, in the very last day of May I
came to an age-old tiny and tranquil Ukrainian
town with its ancient church of Our Lady of
Intercession looking onto a slow river from its
high bank, and I was swept off my feet by a
flash-flood of young maidens, fresh and sixteen,
celebrating their high school graduation in a park
under an open warm blue sky, wearing white bands
and garlands of flowers in their golden hair, and
white ceremonial aprons on top of dark and
mercilessly short skirts leaving open their
graceful knees above high white socks and dark
sleeveless tops flashing tender arms and elbows,
blue eyes a-gleaming in the shade of black
poplars. My Greek friend also fell silent and
pensive, and told me with stifled voice: the
Ukrainian girls are the most beautiful; we have
nothing like that in our part of the world.

This image came back to me as totally different
images of the Orange Revolution flowed from
television screens; and the disintegration of
Ukraine became a question of weeks, if not days.
This country in its present borders came into
being quite recently, in 1991; the chances are,
Ukraine will be split between West and East; with
or without a civil war. The important achievement
of Stalin who brought back the Western Ukraine
into the Orthodox fold from its long captivity
under the Western yoke was undone. It is possible
that the border between the two parts will move
further East, where it was in the beginning of the
17th century. Geopolitically, it is an additional
(on top of dismembered Yugoslavia) catastrophe for
the Russians and for Eastern Orthodoxy. The
Western forces will advance eastward and threaten
Russia from the positions they lost in the long
series of wars that started with Ivan IV's
Livonian War and ended in the partition of Poland
in XVIII century. For geopolitics, ideology plays
only a subservient role in the long-term
confrontation and cooperation of civilisations.
The Orthodox, the West and Islam are three big
constants; from this point of view, the Orthodox
had lost, and the West gained in the
centuries-long game. The net gainer is the US who
realised its wet dream expressed by Brzezinski:
break Ukraine away, for Russia can't be superpower
without Ukraine.



In Ukraine, the US attained victory that eluded
them in Iraq. However, the identification of the
US with the West is far from perfect. Carl Schmitt
preferred to view England and the US as an
"Atlantic" force of the Sea opposing the
Continental forces of Western Europe, Russia and
the Islamic world. In my view, the "Atlantic"
force is as religiously grounded as the three
others; I called it "Neo-Judaic civilisation".
Ukraine, together with other East European states,
will present an American 'Neo-Judaic' outpost,
so-called "New Europe", flanking
independently-minded Europe from the East and
Russia from the West. Western Europe stood by the
US in its confrontation with the East (The Cold
War), but the New Europe will forever keep the
old, Western Europe in the siege ring. Thus the US
victory in Ukraine is a cause for grave concern
for Europeans and for Russians, as well as for the
Islamic world.

For the people of Ukraine, the future is gloomy.
The pro-American claimant for Presidency Victor
Yushchenko is a devotee of neo-liberal economics;
a supporter of full privatisation and forced sale
of Ukrainian assets to US companies for their
soon-to-be-worthless dollars. In the part of
Ukraine he will succeed in keeping (if any), a new
American colony will be established, where US
troops will threaten Moscow and control the
profitable oil route. They could learn of their
fate from an amazing book by John Perkins, a
self-described "economic hit man" - a US
intelligence professional who cheated countries
around the globe out of trillions of dollars. In
an interview[1] Perkins explained his job:

"Our job is to build up the American empire. To
create situations where as many resources as
possible flow into this country [the US], to our
corporations, and our government, and in fact we'
ve been very successful. We've built the largest
empire in the history of the world. This empire,
unlike any other in the history of the world, has
been built primarily through economic
manipulation, through cheating, through fraud,
through seducing people into our way of life. We
give countries debts they can't repay, most of it
comes back to the United States, the country is
left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they
basically become our servants, our slaves."

American support of Yushchenko means that
Yushchenko agreed to do its will, to turn the
people of Ukraine into American slaves. Yushchenko
is also supported by the World Bank and by the
IMF. Neo-liberal 'market doctrine' promoted by the
World Bank had killed millions of Russians,
Africans, Latin Americans whose governments
followed their blue-print. Ukraine has also had
its fair share of 'market economy' and its
population is steadily decreasing. Yushchenko
pushed for neo-liberalism when he was the prime
minister; now he promised to push even stronger
for it.

The pro-American forces in the Western Europe,
yesterday's predator, also want to get a share of
the spoils, as German observer Susanne Scheidt
wrote:

"If Yushchenko will get hold of the government, he
will make sure that the privatization programme
drawn up by the World Bank will go on as
scheduled. On behalf of this programme, German
banks have planned huge investments in Ukraine
that amount to a take-over of Ukrainian public
utilities, networks and gas transport. The German
giant Ruhrgas AG has already signed a deal with
Yushchenko to import gas through the Ukrainian
corridor from US investors in Azerbaijan, whereas
the present Ukrainian government has always
refused to sign such a deal".

Another great supporter of Yushchenko is a group
of Russian Jewish oligarchs kicked out of Russia
by Putin. Extremely wealthy, dreaming of revenge,
hating Putin's Russia, this offshore gang of
Berezovsky, Gusinsky and other ex-Yukos oilmen
provide a big share of financial support for the
Orange revolution. They also pay for the services
of Russian Israeli PR experts who organise the
show in Kiev. They are supported by the network of
the powerful Ukrainian Jewish community; while
behind them stands George Soros, the Jewish
international magnate actively pumping money and
organisational capacities into the Orange forces
of Yushchenko. These external forces rely upon
local young men who received training and advice
from the experts who already organised similar
putsches in Georgia, Serbia, Romania.



Internal supporters of Yushchenko consist of two
quite different groups. The biggest is the
nationalists of Galichina, West Ukraine. While
Galichina is a beautiful land with its own
traditions, friendship with the Russians is not
one of them. For centuries Galichina belonged to
Poland or to the Austro-Hungarian Empire; their
religion is Uniate Christianity; their language is
half-way between Polish and the language spoken in
Kiev. Galichina has a strong nationalist tendency;
during the World War Two they formed an SS
division fighting on the German side. Nowadays,
they form the base for such groups as
swastika-bearing Svoboda (formerly Ukrainian
National Socialist Party), UNA and UNSO who
venerate Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist and
supporter of Hitler. Today they are united in
support of Yushchenko.

They do not mind that Yushchenko is supported by
the Jewish oligarchs; the oligarchs do not mind
them, either. Soros even financed them. So much
for antisemitism: the Jews remember to mention it
only when it suits them. In my view, nationalism
is often used as cheese in mousetrap. Bandera the
nationalist supported Hitler, but Hitler did not
even think to establish a strong Ukrainian state;
he just used the Ukrainian nationalists to
undermine Russia. The same thing happened
everywhere: Breton nationalists supported Hitler
for they thought he will establish an independent
Brittany. They were disappointed, for Hitler
thought they are unnecessary after he took over
France. Arab nationalists undermined the Ottoman
Empire on the service of the West just to find
themselves sold out to the Zionists. Now the
Ukrainian nationalists do the same mistake again -
they support the US; but eventually they will lose
for the US does not need a strong independent
Ukraine.

Another group of Yushchenko supporters is liberal,
relatively wealthy and pro-Western. Many people,
especially in the capital Kiev find their
livelihood connected with the West. There are
dozens of very rich bankers and businessmen,
thousands of those who work in NGOs, receive
grants of Soros or of the EC, there are small
importers, upmarket tarts; there are tens of
thousands of aspiring young men and students who
still hope to 'make it' in the capitalist
competitive society. We know that they will be
disappointed just as it has happened in so many
countries; the West is not going to wait for
millions of educated Ukrainians to take their
place at the top. But in Ukraine, as in Russia
there are millions who still believe in the
American dream, and America spends a lot of money
to keep this dream alive.

The future of Ukraine may be bleak: the beautiful
girls I saw on the shores of Dnepr River will be
shipped to cathouses of Tel Aviv and Istanbul;
their boyfriends will fight for America in Iraq
and elsewhere, their coal mines will be
privatised, sold for peanuts and closed down.
Ukraine can be free in union with Russia - or in
thrall to the West and the Jews. Whatever the
final result of elections - and it will be
disputed - Eastern Ukraine probably will join
Russia; Western Ukraine will be taken up by Poland
or will remain an 'independent' stub of a state.
There is still a chance to repeat the victory of
Chaves or the Miracle of Minsk, where Lukashenka
succeeded to defeat the local agents of Soros and
Berezovsky, for they are not invincible; but
Yanukovich is not made of stern stuff; Putin is
not a daring politician, and the Slav Orthodox
world feels itself lost. Maybe that is why tens of
thousands of Russians came spontaneously to visit
the tomb of Joseph Stalin on 21 December, on 150
year jubilee of the great man who restored
fortunes of Russia, beat off the western attacks
and united the Ukraine.
********************************************

[iltos]

Originally Posted by xico

I didn't realize that Shamir was a Stalinist, but I think that becomes evident with the article. Despite that, I still think he casts an interesting view on what's happening on the Ukraine.

good article, xico....depressing, but good

i am curious tho why you feel that shamir is a stalinist....partly 'cause i have no definition for stalinism of my own, and so checked it out.....seems like a lot of folks are comparing this or that to the idealogy nowadays, and so it's difficult to get a clear meaning....i'm gonna post this one, tho, and ask you if it comes close for you.....because this one i can, at least, understand in light of what shamir has written....tho i'm not sure i would agree

What has remained constant, even if it has acquired new and changing forms, is the acceptance by Stalinism that it is not possible to overthrow capitalism through collective, participatory and democratic methods of class struggle. Thus socialism from above is the perspective of Stalinism, which has now been replaced by the pragmatic acceptance of the dictates of the market. Hobsbawn and others are not rejecting Stalinism - their modest social democracy is contemporary Stalinism. The old god has failed, so they now worship new gods.

your own definition is, of course, welcome, as well.

[linskyjack]

Shamir is a raving lunatic.

[iltos]

Originally Posted by linskyjack

Shamir is a raving lunatic.

LOL....that must the kind of raving lunatic that is so far to the left that he sits next to the reactionary right......

that kind of lunatic?

[linskyjack]

Yeah--he is so far out there he ends up straddling both extremes---Very bizzare character. I started reading his analysis and I said to myself--when are the Jews going to come into play---Sure enough, about five paragraphs down they appear!

[fire_mat99]

What is shamir or stalinist and also if Russias does not run Ukrainian what would happen to the Russia would the economy get better or not and why

[plschwartz]

Xico:
For the first and last time I think I read your Shamir post. I think he is not so much an orthodox Stalinist as basicically be a professional "anti" not a great thinker and certainly reaching in his attempt to be a geopolitician. To bone up on my weak Ukrainian Church History I surfed and found this http://www.unicorne.org/orthodoxy/ar...december_8.htm. The Kyivian church certainly has little love for the Russian Church as its patriarchy.

What shamir does betray is a common trait of "antis" - a not so deeply rooted authoritarian streak. Saw lots of that in the 60-70's; in this way he may have similarities with Stalin


I guess it is obvous that I have been deeply interested in the Orange Revolution, as I have been with all these spontaneous anti-Communist and post-commie demonstrations. I guess the origins were the many Hungarians I met through my first girlfriend (Hungarian of course). I was in Prague summer of 68 etc. Recently I have been reading all the blogs and reporters visits to tent city in Kyiv etc.
Samir seems only to understand the use of power and he posits the two powerful images of US/Russia as the all-powerful manipulators. I will only mention what a supervisor of mine once mentioned_that people in "perminant revolution" have been sat on heavily by authoritarian parents. Hmmm.

No I think that the Ukraine is a spontaneous democratic movement. The Urkrainians are a mixture of a variety of christian demoninations and have had to learn to get along and acceptv differences. I think this is a good sign for a nation. I think they will be far ahead of certain other "fast-track" EU countries and will become re-intergrated into Europe.

[fire_mat99]

What I'm so confused

[xico]

Originally Posted by iltos

good article, xico....depressing, but good

i am curious tho why you feel that shamir is a stalinist....partly 'cause i have no definition for stalinism of my own, and so checked it out.....seems like a lot of folks are comparing this or that to the idealogy nowadays, and so it's difficult to get a clear meaning....i'm gonna post this one, tho, and ask you if it comes close for you.....because this one i can, at least, understand in light of what shamir has written....tho i'm not sure i would agree



your own definition is, of course, welcome, as well.

Like Mao, Stalin was a right wing socialist. Both are socialists, but both are right wing, meaning that they are opportunists and unprincipled, the end justifies the means. The result? Lots of dead people, lots of suffering and pain, and in the end, failed revolutions.

I've heard so many bad things about Stalin that I am always shocked when I hear someone say something nice about him.

[plschwartz]

Synchronistically from this weeks Moscow Times:



Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him
By Donald Rayfield
Random House
576 Pages. $29.95

Resisting Stalin

The more we learn of Josef Stalin, the more alluring he becomes.

By Lewis H. Siegelbaum
Published: December 24, 2004

For reasons that seem obvious, if a little ghoulish, readers can't get enough of Josef Stalin and the horrors he committed. This past year alone, we have been treated to several blockbuster biographies, of which Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" made the greatest splash. Reports that Saddam Hussein modeled his unsavory career on Stalin's only whetted the public's appetite for one of the greatest WMDs of all time.

The more we learn of Stalin -- and we have learned a great deal since the archives began offering up their secrets in the early 1990s -- the more nasty but also the more fascinating he becomes. Variously diagnosed by biographers as insecure, mistrustful, paranoid, vengeful, cynical, fanatical, and in nearly constant physical pain, he channeled whatever it was that ailed him into besting his more eloquent, better educated and less psychotic rivals for the mantle of Communist Party leadership, and presiding over the Soviet empire for more than a quarter of a century.


But, argues Donald Rayfield in this angry and accusatory book, he didn't do it alone. Stalin needed men nearly as loathsome as he to carry out the dirty work of whipping his socialist society into shape and stifling real or suspected opposition. Rayfield's argument pushes an already open door, for others have written about "all Stalin's men," his lieutenants, magnates, henchmen, inner circle, and the like. Usually included in this gallery of rogues are Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Klement Voroshilov, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrenty Beria. Rayfield focuses on the leaders of the Cheka security force and its successors, which brings "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky and Genrikh Yagoda into the mix.

A professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary, University of London, and author of a biography of Anton Chekhov and a literary history of Georgia, Rayfield offers a wealth of information about these men, their associates and the security forces in general. His observations on the intellectual and cultural milieus in which his subjects revolved are particularly acute, as in when he considers the influence of Georgia's medieval past on Stalin's conception of a ruler, or asks why so many writers (he says poets, but the point applies no less to writers of prose) were drawn to the Cheka and vice versa. He also comes up with several arresting aphorisms about Stalin's Marxism ("Stalin was a Marxist in the same sense that Machiavelli was a Christian: both saw the retention of power as the sole task for a ruler") and dedication to communism ("he was no more a communist than a Borgia pope was a Catholic.")

But the book suffers from some serious debilities. One is the sheer volume of detail, much of which barely hints at explanatory significance. It turns out that Dzerzhinsky, Menzhinsky and Yagoda were all sentimentalists to one degree or another and depended on their sisters to a perhaps abnormal extent, though what one is to make of this is unclear. The same goes for references to Stalin's seduction of a pre-pubescent 13-year-old girl during his Siberian exile, Menzhinsky's pre-1917 literary decadence, Yagoda's weakness for fine wines, dildos and pornography, Yezhov's affair with and second marriage to Yevgenia Feigenberg, their move to an apartment on Strastnoi (Passion!) Bulvar, and his subsequent "active and passive bisexual" behavior, and Beria's ... well, I'll leave Beria's peccadilloes to the imagination. So many are Rayfield's digressions, in fact, that one almost forgets what the point of his book is.

A more serious problem still is the author's penchant for statements that appear pregnant with meaning, but on inspection turn out to be rather silly or totally unsubstantiated. The reader is informed, for example, that "one in three great dictators, artists, or writers witness before adolescence the death, bankruptcy or disabling of their fathers." By whose reckoning, one wonders. Who qualifies as "great," what exactly does "witness" mean with respect to pre-adolescent children, and how does the sorry fate of their fathers compare statistically to the general population?

In the chapter devoted to the Civil War, we are presented with a series of truly horrific acts committed by members of the secret service. Revekka Maizel, the "consort" of the "semi-qualified doctor, virtuoso pianist" and slaughterer of schoolchildren Mikhail Kedrov, "personally shot a hundred White officers and bourgeois and then drowned another 500 on a barge," Rayfield writes. Personally? Does that mean they did it all alone? What is the evidentiary basis for this claim?

Rayfield does provide citations for statements such as the "almost plausible theory" that the attempted assassination of Vladimir Lenin by the Socialist Revolutionary and former anarchist Fanny Kaplan was part of a coup plotted by none other than Yakov Sverdlov, the first head of the Soviet state. But there are none confirming that Chekist Georgy Atarbekov "hacked a hundred hostages in Pyatigorsk to death with a saber," that Red Army commander Iona Yakir "had 50 percent of male Don Cossacks exterminated" or that "Stalin's Baku comrade," Rozalia Zemlyachka, and her lover, Bela Kun, "murdered 50,000 White officers."


I

"Documents can lie, and rumors can tell the truth," Rayfield writes in the preface. Perhaps, but failure to indicate what is a rumor or take into account such well-researched books as George Leggett's 1981 history of the Cheka does not promote confidence in the author's judgment. Neither do his claims that an "extermination camp" set up in northern Russia during the Civil War "was as bad as any of Hitler's would be," that the "fate of ... the kulaks was as horrific as the fate of Poland's Jews under Hitler," that "Stalin would kill far more German communists than Hitler," or that "Stalin's attack on the peasantry ravaged Russian agriculture ... to such an extent that for perhaps a century Russia would be incapable of feeding itself." I could go on (for there are numerous minor, but to someone familiar with Soviet history, glaring errors of fact), but I won't.

Stalin and his "hangmen" did enough damage without larding an account of their exploits with statements of dubious accuracy. The fall of the Soviet Union, the opening of its archives, and the emergence of a new generation of historians both in Russia and abroad has led to considerable improvement in the quality of the history being written about the Stalin era. Unfortunately, these same developments also gave license for writing and getting published almost anything about the Soviet Union that is sufficiently sensationalist. As educators, we should to try to aim higher than pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Lewis H. Siegelbaum is a professor of history at Michigan State University. His most recent book, together with Andrei Sokolov, is "Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents."

Copyright © 2004 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.

[iltos]

Originally Posted by xico

.....meaning that they are opportunists and unprincipled, the end justifies the means.

must be "post christmas traumatic stress syndrome"...the as yet undiagnosed PCTSS

anyway, i'm feeling pretty cynical this morning....isn't the above quote a definition of ALL politicians?

[xico]

Originally Posted by plschwartz

Synchronistically from this weeks Moscow Times:



Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him
By Donald Rayfield
Random House
576 Pages. $29.95

Resisting Stalin

The more we learn of Josef Stalin, the more alluring he becomes.

By Lewis H. Siegelbaum
Published: December 24, 2004

For reasons that seem obvious, if a little ghoulish, readers can't get enough of Josef Stalin and the horrors he committed. This past year alone, we have been treated to several blockbuster biographies, of which Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" made the greatest splash. Reports that Saddam Hussein modeled his unsavory career on Stalin's only whetted the public's appetite for one of the greatest WMDs of all time.

The more we learn of Stalin -- and we have learned a great deal since the archives began offering up their secrets in the early 1990s -- the more nasty but also the more fascinating he becomes. Variously diagnosed by biographers as insecure, mistrustful, paranoid, vengeful, cynical, fanatical, and in nearly constant physical pain, he channeled whatever it was that ailed him into besting his more eloquent, better educated and less psychotic rivals for the mantle of Communist Party leadership, and presiding over the Soviet empire for more than a quarter of a century.


But, argues Donald Rayfield in this angry and accusatory book, he didn't do it alone. Stalin needed men nearly as loathsome as he to carry out the dirty work of whipping his socialist society into shape and stifling real or suspected opposition. Rayfield's argument pushes an already open door, for others have written about "all Stalin's men," his lieutenants, magnates, henchmen, inner circle, and the like. Usually included in this gallery of rogues are Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Klement Voroshilov, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrenty Beria. Rayfield focuses on the leaders of the Cheka security force and its successors, which brings "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky and Genrikh Yagoda into the mix.

A professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary, University of London, and author of a biography of Anton Chekhov and a literary history of Georgia, Rayfield offers a wealth of information about these men, their associates and the security forces in general. His observations on the intellectual and cultural milieus in which his subjects revolved are particularly acute, as in when he considers the influence of Georgia's medieval past on Stalin's conception of a ruler, or asks why so many writers (he says poets, but the point applies no less to writers of prose) were drawn to the Cheka and vice versa. He also comes up with several arresting aphorisms about Stalin's Marxism ("Stalin was a Marxist in the same sense that Machiavelli was a Christian: both saw the retention of power as the sole task for a ruler") and dedication to communism ("he was no more a communist than a Borgia pope was a Catholic.")

But the book suffers from some serious debilities. One is the sheer volume of detail, much of which barely hints at explanatory significance. It turns out that Dzerzhinsky, Menzhinsky and Yagoda were all sentimentalists to one degree or another and depended on their sisters to a perhaps abnormal extent, though what one is to make of this is unclear. The same goes for references to Stalin's seduction of a pre-pubescent 13-year-old girl during his Siberian exile, Menzhinsky's pre-1917 literary decadence, Yagoda's weakness for fine wines, dildos and pornography, Yezhov's affair with and second marriage to Yevgenia Feigenberg, their move to an apartment on Strastnoi (Passion!) Bulvar, and his subsequent "active and passive bisexual" behavior, and Beria's ... well, I'll leave Beria's peccadilloes to the imagination. So many are Rayfield's digressions, in fact, that one almost forgets what the point of his book is.

A more serious problem still is the author's penchant for statements that appear pregnant with meaning, but on inspection turn out to be rather silly or totally unsubstantiated. The reader is informed, for example, that "one in three great dictators, artists, or writers witness before adolescence the death, bankruptcy or disabling of their fathers." By whose reckoning, one wonders. Who qualifies as "great," what exactly does "witness" mean with respect to pre-adolescent children, and how does the sorry fate of their fathers compare statistically to the general population?

In the chapter devoted to the Civil War, we are presented with a series of truly horrific acts committed by members of the secret service. Revekka Maizel, the "consort" of the "semi-qualified doctor, virtuoso pianist" and slaughterer of schoolchildren Mikhail Kedrov, "personally shot a hundred White officers and bourgeois and then drowned another 500 on a barge," Rayfield writes. Personally? Does that mean they did it all alone? What is the evidentiary basis for this claim?

Rayfield does provide citations for statements such as the "almost plausible theory" that the attempted assassination of Vladimir Lenin by the Socialist Revolutionary and former anarchist Fanny Kaplan was part of a coup plotted by none other than Yakov Sverdlov, the first head of the Soviet state. But there are none confirming that Chekist Georgy Atarbekov "hacked a hundred hostages in Pyatigorsk to death with a saber," that Red Army commander Iona Yakir "had 50 percent of male Don Cossacks exterminated" or that "Stalin's Baku comrade," Rozalia Zemlyachka, and her lover, Bela Kun, "murdered 50,000 White officers."


I

"Documents can lie, and rumors can tell the truth," Rayfield writes in the preface. Perhaps, but failure to indicate what is a rumor or take into account such well-researched books as George Leggett's 1981 history of the Cheka does not promote confidence in the author's judgment. Neither do his claims that an "extermination camp" set up in northern Russia during the Civil War "was as bad as any of Hitler's would be," that the "fate of ... the kulaks was as horrific as the fate of Poland's Jews under Hitler," that "Stalin would kill far more German communists than Hitler," or that "Stalin's attack on the peasantry ravaged Russian agriculture ... to such an extent that for perhaps a century Russia would be incapable of feeding itself." I could go on (for there are numerous minor, but to someone familiar with Soviet history, glaring errors of fact), but I won't.

Stalin and his "hangmen" did enough damage without larding an account of their exploits with statements of dubious accuracy. The fall of the Soviet Union, the opening of its archives, and the emergence of a new generation of historians both in Russia and abroad has led to considerable improvement in the quality of the history being written about the Stalin era. Unfortunately, these same developments also gave license for writing and getting published almost anything about the Soviet Union that is sufficiently sensationalist. As educators, we should to try to aim higher than pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Lewis H. Siegelbaum is a professor of history at Michigan State University. His most recent book, together with Andrei Sokolov, is "Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents."

Copyright © 2004 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.

That was a nice post, PL!